Child-rated versus parent-rated quality of life of community-based obese children across gender and grade
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RESEARCH
Open Access
Child-rated versus parent-rated quality of life of community-based obese children across gender and grade Chia-Ting Su1, Jung-Der Wang2,3 and Chung-Ying Lin4*
Abstract Background: Quality of life (QoL), which can be examined using self-reports or parental reports, might help healthcare providers understand obese children’s subjective well-being in several domains of life. Community-based obese children report their QoL lower than their parents do. However, the differences between child- and parent-reported QoL have neither been tested across gender and grade nor analyzed by item. This study probed the relationship between obesity and QoL item scores in children, and compared child-reported with parentreported QoL stratified by gender and grade. Methods: One hundred eighty-seven dyads of 8- to 12-year-old children (60 obese, 127 normal-weight) and their parents were recruited. QoL was assessed using both child- and parent-reported Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 (PedsQL) questionnaires. Results: Regression analyses showed specific difficulties with physical and emotional QoL in third- and fourth-grade obese boys (β = 0.278-0.620), and specific problems with social functioning in fifth- and sixth-grade obese girls (β = 0.337-0.411). Moreover, parents seemed unaware of the specific difficulties that their children faced (β = 0.274-0.435). Conclusions: Obese children seemed to have their difficulties from third to fifth grade, respectively, and their parents seemed unaware of them. Thus, parents need to be more aware of specific difficulties related to childhood obesity. Keywords: Obese, Pediatric, Quality of life, Self-report, Proxy report
Background Obese children are likely to have physical and psychosocial difficulties [1], including poor physical fitness [2] and low self-esteem [3]. Previous studies that have reported these obesity-induced problems have designed programs to decrease the prevalence of obesity [4] and to increase children’s habitual physical activity [5,6]. In addition to these efforts from schools and society, it is important to evaluate how obese children perceive their subjective well-being in several domains of life in addition to a traditional assessment of their objective health status. * Correspondence: [email protected] 4 Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan 70101, Taiwan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Using quality of life (QoL) to understand more about a child’s life is an increasing trend. QoL as a measure provides healthcare providers a holistic view of obese children’s subjective well-being in several domains of life [7]. This information is essential for healthcare decisionmaking. Recent community-based [8-10] and clinically based [11-16] studies have reported that obese children score lower than do normal-weight children on QoL assessments. Of these studies, many [8,10-17] have assessed QoL using both child self-reports (child-rep
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